Steve Jobs - Adam

Steve Jobs was born on February 24, 1955 to Joanne Simpson and Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, who gave him up for adoption. He was adopted by Clara and Paul Jobs, who named him Steven "Steve" Paul Jobs.

In his youth, Jobs' life was filled with frustrations over formal schooling. In lower grades Jobs was a prankster, and his fourth grade teacher had to brie him to study. Even then, Jobs did so well on his tests that the school administration wanted him to skip up to high school, a proposal to which his parents declined.

After high school, Jobs enrolled to Reed College in Portland, Oregon. He soon realized that college was not the right thing for him, and he dropped out after a single semester.
In 1974, Jobs became a video game designer for Atari. He soon left Atari and traveled to India to find spiritual peace and experiment with psychedelic drugs. In 1976, when Jobs was only 21, he and his friend Wozniak started Apple Computers Inc. They started in the Jobs' family garage, and funded their entrepreneurial venture after Jobs sold his Volkswagen bus and Wozniak sold his scientific calculator.

Jobs and Wozniak are credited with making the computer smaller, cheaper, intuitive, and accessible to everyday consumers. Their first model, Apple I, earned them $774,000. Three years after they released their second model, Apple II, sales increased 700% to $139 million. Steve Jobs looked to marketing expert John Scully of Pepsi-Cola to lead the Apple company as president.

However, the next Apple products suffered significant design flaws resulting in many recalls and consumer disappointment. IBM suddenly surpassed Apple sales and Apple competed with an IBM and PC dominated business world. Apple released the Macintosh computer in 1984. But despite positive sales and performance superior to that of IBM and PC, the Macintosh was still not IBM compatible. Scully believed that Jobs was hurting Apple, and began to phase him out.

Jobs resigned as Apple C.E.O. in 1985 to start a hardware company called NeXT, Inc. The following year, Jobs bought an animation company which he later renamed Pixar Animation Studios. Jobs believed in Pixar's potential and invested $50 million of his own money into the company. Pixar's films such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles have earned more than $4 billion. Apple eventually bought NeXT, Inc. and Jobs was re-hired to work at Apple.

In 2003, jobs discovered he had a neuroendocrine tumor, a rare form of pancreas cancer. Instead of immediately choosing to have surgery, Jobs chose to alter his pescovegetarian diet, postponing the surgery for nine months. Apple feared that shareholders would pull their stocks if they learned that their C.E.O. was sick. But in the end, Jobs had a successful surgery to remove the pancreatic tumor.

In recent years, Apple has introduced new and revolutionary products such as the Macbook, iMac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Almost every time Apple releases a new product, every other company tries to make a newer and better version of it. In 2007, Apple stocks were a record-breaking $199.99 per share, and the company boasted a $1.58 billion profit, an $18 billion surplus in the bank, and zero debt.